The oldies who ruled the Noughties: The feisty women who have dominated the first decade of the new millennium

They're supposed to be the invisible generation. An army of mature women whose voices have been slowly erased from today's giddy society: ignored at work, absent from our cinemas and TV screens, apparently despised by the BBC and Hollywood.

But how true is this? Superficially, it may seem that the Noughties was all about the young and new, whether in technology or on screen, but look behind the surface buzz about bright young things and social networking sites, and a different reality emerges, one in which older women, far from being ignored, have proved instead that this decade was about them.

Older generation: Joanna Lumley (left) and Glenn Close are two of the stars that have lead mature women to rule the Noughties

For whether it is improvements in the workplace, advancements in
women's health and lives or, more simply, fashion's acknowledgement
that women don't suddenly become cardigan-wearing frumps once they hit
40, this has been a decade which has seen older women go from being
shunted to the sidelines to proving that their financial power and
independent minds make them a formidable force.

And no year was more about the older woman than 2009. As this decade limps to its close mired in recrimination and collapse, the brightest hope seems to come from this older generation.

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Whether it is Joanna Lumley, 63, berating the government over its treatment of the Gurkhas, Meryl Streep, 60, talking about her refusal to play Hollywood's twisted age game in Vanity Fair or Hillary Clinton, 62, with an approval rating higher than President Obama, any hope that we might move forward from this shiny, shallow decade towards a better, more honourable era came largely from women of a certain age.

And perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised that while the rest of us were tweeting about this and blogging about that, so intent on capturing each moment that we forgot how to enjoy living in it, this older generation was silently waiting for those times when what was most needed was a confident, mature woman with a belief in herself and the ability to get on with the job.

This year's Booker Prize winner, Hilary Mantel, 57, wrote recently
about the women of her youth: 'When I was a child, no one supposed that
women over 50 were invisible.

The write stuff: Author Hilary Mantel, 57, wrote recently about the women of her youth

On the contrary, at 50 plus, these women ran the world and they knew it - they were unyielding, undaunted and savagely unimpressed by anything the world could do to them.'

That power was temporarily forgotten in our headlong rush to embrace the new. As someone who began this decade on the cusp of 30, I used to be terrified of what my 40s would bring.

It seemed there were only two possible paths: sink slowly into the invisible army of ignored older women or desperately cling to the last remnants of youth, sacrificing all dignity as I did so.

Yet as this decade has progressed and that feared milestone of 40 inches nearer, growing old seems more of a pleasure than a chore.

As people will no doubt point out, part of that is an inevitable process of growing up; no age seems as bad once you edge ever closer to it, but more than that it seems to me that as the decade has progressed, so the pendulum has swung back in favour of older women.

Not everything is perfect, of course. In the workplace, women continue to battle for equal rights - the most recent survey of FTSE 100 companies found that the percentage of women on their boards had fallen after steady increases during the first half of the decade, while the pay gap between the sexes widens once women turn 40. But what is changing is our perception of these older women.

Where once they were supposed to be invisible, now they are fighting back, reinventing their careers and proving that you don't have to shuffle over to the sidelines simply because you are no longer in your first bloom.

That this is increasingly true was shown by Michelle Pfeiffer's response to turning 50. Where previous generations of actresses either lied about their age or were embarrassed by the change, Pfeiffer embraced it. 'If you think hitting 40 is liberating, wait until you hit 50,' she said.

Our attitudes towards ageing have also changed this decade. While we began the Noughties desperate to halt age, we have ended it with an acknowledgement that we may not have to swathe ourselves in shapeless skirts and baggy jumpers, nor do we have to cling to our youth. We can instead age gracefully, as nature intended.

Fighting back: Michelle Pfeiffer found turning 50 'liberating', while Meryl Streep is enjoying some of the best roles of her career

The thirty-something Carries and Bridgets, swigging their Cosmopolitans while trying to preserve their youth, have been replaced by more mature role models such as Glenn Close as a rapacious lawyer in Damages, or Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife.

These were intelligent, attractive, confident women with graver concerns than whether or not their Jimmy Choos matched their floral corsage.

As she collected her Emmy for best actress, Glenn Close, 62, said: 'We're proving complicated, powerful, mature women are sexy, high entertainment and can carry a show. I call us the sisterhood of the TV drama divas.'

Meryl Streep believes that film executives are being forced to pay attention to what older women want. 'It's incredible - I'm 60 and I'm playing the romantic lead in romantic comedies,' she told Vanity Fair, adding that she was pleased because middle-aged women are seen as 'the audience that nobody really gives a s*** about'.

NIFTY 50S

One in six new businesses in the UK is run by the over-50s, contributing to more than £24.4bn to the economy every year

That Streep was right to pinpoint her success as being down to the middle-aged women prepared to shell out cash at the cinema can be seen by the success of her most recent film. This year's rom-com hit, Julie & Julia, written by Norah Ephron, 68, has grossed £75 million so far.

The growing number of older women with well-paid jobs and disposable incomes has also seen a sea change in the way we view clothes. At the beginning of the decade over-40s style was either frumptastic or trying too hard.

However, fashion, too, has adapted to fit the commercial spending power of its older clientele.

Jane Shepherdson's defection from Topshop to Whistles saw the birth of a new era of grown-up womenswear, one in which durability and style were prized over the quick trend-driven fix.

From Cos to Uniqlo, from Reiss to Net-a-Porter.com, the fashion choices offered to older women have dramatically opened up this decade.

Just look at Marks & Spencer. The nation's erstwhile favourite saved itself from extinction in 2006 with the launch of a series of glamorous adverts featuring a radiant Twiggy (then 57).

In the period after the ads first ran an additional 1.4 million people shopped for clothes at M&S, resulting in a profit of £14.9million.

The relieved M&S bosses then promptly launched Portfolio, a range aimed at women aged 45 and older and modelled by the still stunning Marie Helvin, 56.

Still stylish: Older models Twiggy (left) and Marie Helvin have both contributed to Marks and Spencer's recent success

Advances in healthcare and health education mean that as a nation we live longer, eat better and enjoy a higher standard of life. For older women in particular, those benefits are myriad.

They can be seen in the improvement of HRT treatments for menopause and in the fact that women can give birth later than ever before.

Best of all, older woman have been allowed to admit that not only do they enjoy sex, they might be rather good at it.

As sex therapist and relationship counsellor Julia Cole said: 'In our 20s we are so concerned with our body image and comparing ourselves to our friends, which is exhausting and makes us miserable.

'When we get older, we are more into what pleases us and our partner and don't care so much about what our friends are doing. This makes our capacity for enjoyment much greater.'

In the end, the Noughties was all about the return of strong-willed, self-confident older women. Long may they thrive.